Sonata for Horn and Piano (2024)
Duration: 15:00 minutes
Instrumentation: horn in F, piano
Premiere: June 24, 2025 by Caroline Steiger, horn and Michael Ippolito, piano at the International Horn Symposium hosted at James Madison University,
Notes:
My horn sonata opens with a simple motive derived from the effect of hand-stopping the horn’s bell. Hornists typically play with their hand in the bell, and frequently stop (or block) the bell with their hand to create a dark, buzzing sound. But if a hornist gradually moves their hand from normal to stopped position, the pitch first slides down and then suddenly rises to above where it began. (The notes are very close together; for instance: C, B, D-flat.) This is fascinating just as a sonic phenomenon, but it also strikes me as extremely expressive, like a sigh followed by a vocal crack. From this kernel of an idea, I wrote an unaccompanied horn melody that serves as the central theme of the sonata. This theme is heard at the beginning and returns three times, marking the main sections.
While my sonata is in one continuous movement, lasting about fifteen minutes, there are elements of a three-movement form. The first large section is a funeral march, in which the dark mood of the opening horn theme is developed. The horn theme returns in a piano interlude, as a chordal chorale rather than an unaccompanied melody. This introduces the second lyrical section, in which natural overtones on the horn figure prominently. To me, the natural tuning introduces an element of light and hope into the otherwise dark atmosphere of the sonata. Following another brief piano interlude, in which the tempo rapidly accelerates, the stopped horn introduces the theme again, this time as a sinister scherzo. With distorted horn calls and relentless perpetual motion, this scherzo develops into a thunderous climax. Here, the theme returns once more, as a final cri de cœur that leads back to the funeral march for a brief, tragic coda.